


The Whetstone

by shadow_lover



Category: Headless Cross - Black Sabbath (Song), Original Work
Genre: Clothed/Naked, Demon/Human Relationships, M/M, Marking, Non-Consensual Bondage, Ritual Sex, Rough Sex, Size Difference, Size Kink, Slavery, Violent Ideation, abusive background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-05 18:41:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11019282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_lover/pseuds/shadow_lover
Summary: The oil was sticky on Dire’s brow, and as the sun sank, the wind cut colder through his thin silks. He dug his toes into the dirt, and imagined it was wet with running blood.





	The Whetstone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> Happy Jukebox, thedevilchicken! :)

The Witch-Prince himself hung the talisman around Dire’s neck. His hands were soft and perfumed, his face sun-warmed, and his gaze cold. The talisman was heavy, near as large across as Dire’s spread hand: the golden sunburst cross of the Imperial Church. The chain was long, and the talisman rested in the hollow beneath his ribs. The metal was cold through the thin silk tunic they’d dressed him in.

The Witch-Prince spoke as if addressing him, but Dire knew the words were meant instead for soldiers and clerics arrayed behind him. For all that Dire stood draped in silk upon the dais, his presence was as thin and insubstantial as the smoke rising beyond the hill—the besieged town of Yarrowen.

“Your sacrifice,” the Witch-Prince intoned, “will grant my army the strength to end this war. We will walk through fire unharmed and put our enemies to the torch. Their blood will paint the very earth and sky. By Satan’s power, we will conquer Yarrowen, and this proud land will be whole and ours again.” 

The soldiers cheered. Dire swayed. It was nearing noon, and he hadn’t eaten since dinner the day before. And not much then—he’d been half-done with his rations when the raiding party returned and he was summoned to wait upon his master, the Gray Priest. He’d had no inkling the night’s service would lead him here: a lowest-born slave, named as such, exalted before the entire southern army.

His stomach crawled with hunger, and he couldn’t tell whether the cold behind his eyes was exhaustion or fear. He wanted nothing more than to flee like smoke into the sky.

*

One of the soldiers had found the tablet in the ruins of a nearby temple. Several runes were crumbled and illegible, one corner broken off in the same witch-blast that ruined the building, but the remaining lines were clear enough.

The Gray Priest smoothed the dust off. He read, and his eyes narrowed.

“Fetch my cowl,” he said, still reading.

Dire kept his eyes averted from his master’s face as he arranged the cowl about his shoulders, then knelt to dust his sandals and the beads that hung from his belt. He was still kneeling when the Gray Priest set forth, and he had to scramble to keep up.

When they reached the Witch-Prince’s pavilion, Dire hesitated. He had never been inside before. But the Gray Priest barked at him to keep up, so Dire climbed the wooden steps and ducked under the silk hanging. He hung as far behind his master as he dared, keeping to the edges of the lamplight. Lowest-born were only to be seen when they were of service.

He’d never seen the Witch-Prince out of full armor before. Tonight, he was not a statue of onyx and gold; he was a broad-shouldered man sitting at his table. The spread of food before him would have fed Dire for a week.

The Gray Priest presented the tablet, and explained. Dire did not understand the clerical jargon. Something about power. Something about a bargain. A chance to win this war, and at that, the Witch-Prince’s eyes lit up.

“It’s old magic, and unproven,” the Gray Priest hedged. Perhaps he too was alarmed by the fire in his prince’s eyes. “It may be no more than fallen-folk’s superstition.” 

“I don’t need power. I need morale. Superstition will serve.” The Witch-Prince dipped his fingers in a bowl of rosewater. “Need the sacrifice be willing?”

The Gray Priest consulted the tablet again. “No, my lord.”

“Then we won’t waste a good soldier.” The Witch-Prince took up a knife and a plum. The juice ran red down his fingers.

*

They led him barefoot. “To symbolize our humility, reverence, and dedication,” a cleric announced now. But when they took his boots an hour ago, that same cleric had said, “Let’s not waste good leather on a dead kid.”

An honor guard: four soldiers before him, four soldiers behind him. The Gray Priest in his litter behind them, and another four soldiers behind them. The litter was carried by four lowest-born. Dire knew two of them—Wretched used to work as a cook’s slave, and Fear once invited him very quietly to prayer—but now, they would not meet his eyes.

They marched away from the Witch-Prince’s camp, away from the smoke of Yarrowen, and along the packed dirt road. They marched as the sun reached its zenith, and then began to lean behind them, so they walked with their shadows before them. The sun lit their path even as it wound between groves and hillocks. Dire did not glance behind him to see if the camp and Yarrowen disappeared. He had eyes only for the rise of land before them, a gray and rock gnarl pushing up from the landscape. There was no green upon it. It was barren, untouched by man, save the great monument at its peak.

It had been a cross once. An older, simpler form of the cross Dire now wore around his neck. It was as dark and rugged and weather-worn as anything the fallen-folk had left, but some day long ago, an unknown force had sheared off the top of it. Above the horizontal bar rose only a few feet of crumbled, black-blasted rock.

There were stories about the headless cross. The kitchen folk told them, and the foot soldiers repeated them, and even some of the lowest-born gave into the superstition. Dire didn’t care for the stories. Life was a slow, rough slog from master to master, until he died. He had no space in his heart for the fallen-folk tales so cherished by Fear and his lot.

Dire would die of exposure on that rock before Satan or any other power claimed him.

Twelve soldiers and a priest to escort a barefoot lowest-born—as if he could have outrun even one  
of them.

He was relieved when they reached the top of the hill. It was the end of the climb: the end of sharp rocks catching his heel, the end of a soldier’s rough hand on his shoulder when he stumbled. The end of him, but it was easy not to think of that when the sun was bright, the breeze light through his silks, and he no longer had to climb.

The headless cross loomed, as tall of three of him, and broad enough his outstretched arms couldn’t touch each edge at once. There were already rings rusted into the coarse black face of it. He let the soldiers grab him by the shoulders and shove him against the cross. They were not rough with him, nor were they gentle. They gave no thought for his comfort or acquiescence; they put him in place, and he stayed. 

“This would pay a round of drinks or ten,” a soldier said, tugging the talisman at his neck.

Another shouldered her aside. “It’ll pay a fortnight’s lodging in the cages if you touch it again.” He tightened the cuffs around Dire’s wrists, and measured out a length of chain.

Dire hated them.

The feeling seized him like cold flame in his gut. His vision half-blacked with it, then sharpened violently. He catalogued every pock and pore on the man’s face, the rash creeping up under his beard. The woman’s green, narrow eyes and flaking skin. The matching short soldier’s haircuts. 

He _hated_ them.

It must have showed in his knifelike gaze, because the woman stumbled back and spat at his feet. They secured him quickly, without further chatter, and backed away.

Dire barely paid attention to the Gray Priest’s approach, nor his gestures and incantations. He was too preoccupied with his newfound hatred. Newfound, not newborn. He knew now it had a grown from a seed inside his heart, and stretched deep roots through lungs and gut and bone, and only now blossomed into its full, cold glory.

He hadn’t felt _anything_ in so long. It was meager comfort as the Gray Priest crossed himself, anointed Dire’s brow with vervain oil, and condemned him to die.

*

The cuffs were too tight to yank off his hands, but not tight enough to pinch his skin. If he thought he might wear them for longer than a day, he’d expect them to start rubbing his wrists raw. But he would be dead before that was a concern, whether by ritual or by night’s chill. As the sun sank in front of him, he was thinking the latter more likely by the minute.

The cuffs were chained to rings at shoulder height, and the chains were just long enough to allow him to sit. When he folded to the ground, his arms hung half-bent. A puppet, with no more orders to obey.

As the sun reddened and sank, he contemplated the landscape. The dark stretching forest, and the barren holes at the edges where trees have been cut for siege equipment. The wide gray sluice of the Yarrow River, and the white and red banners that might be ships awaiting orders. The billowing smoke of ruined Yarrowen; the thinner smoke of the army’s campfires.

He remembered the smell of sweeter smoke. The heady incense of the Gray Priest’s tent. He imagined draping the cowl again over the Gray Priest’s shoulder, wrapping the velvet tighter, tighter, until the Gray Priest choked, face purpling darker than his silk robes. Strangling him. He imagined stalking into the Witch-Prince’s tent, finding him sitting at table with his berries and pastries and poultry. Darting fast as flame to seize the butcher knife, and sinking it into the Witch-Prince’s sunburned neck. Imagined soft hands lifting to fight him off. Imagined slicing them to ribbons.

He imagined spitting in the green-eyed soldier’s face, and slamming her against the headless cross, until her skull cracked against the stone.

The oil was sticky on Dire’s brow, and as the sun sank, the wind cut colder through his thin silks. He dug his toes into the dirt, and imagined it was wet with running blood.

He fell asleep sometime after sunset. He faded haphazardly in and out of dreams, in which he was sometimes free, and sometimes still bound. Bound to the cross, bound by the fire, bound to the Witch-Prince’s table. Sometimes he held a knife. Sometimes silver glinted in another’s hands. In a dream, the talisman around his neck grew heavy, dragging him down, until he could hardly breathe, and the heavy metal heated through, hot as—

Dire gasped awake. This was no dream. The talisman was warmer, growing steadily hotter through his thin tunic. Almost humming, and it prickled in the faint, uncomfortable way Dire associated with magic. He cringed, and shifted up on his knees, leaning forward so the talisman fell away from his chest. His shoulders strained.

And then the talisman flared, sparking red and black, and was answered with a red flash of lightning, so bright Dire’s vision swam. The following clap of thunder was so loud and so close, Dire swayed with it; had he not already been kneeling, he would have fallen. The air around him, his very veins, crackled with magic such as he’d never felt. His ears rang; the night was all black; then he could hear nothing but a thin, whistling wind. A ragged sound. He realized by the dagger-effort of his lungs that it was his own panicked breathing.

The magic did not abate. Dire clenched his fists and looked up.

Black magic bloomed in mid-air. A swirling nexus of blackness and blood-red sparks, a violet gleam. A hole punched through the fabric of being, and the next realm’s clouds spilling out. It blocked out the stars.

And through the dark gate, a figure emerged. Tall, dark-clad, moving to earth as if descending an invisible staircase. The hand outstretched to the invisible handrail had claws. The clouds of black magic clung to him like a cloak—no. The darkness stretched, blocking out more of the stars, and Dire realized they were the demon’s wings, sleek-feathered, black, huge. 

Black-booted feet touched the earth, and with another thunderclap, the dark gate closed.

He stood not a dozen feet away, and power emanated from him. Despite the darkness of night, he seemed to glimmer at the edges of his being, so that every pale plane of his sharp face was clear, and the sly curve of his lips, and the foreign garb. Like a priest’s robes, if those robes were armor, and eschewed sleeves for bare, muscular arms wreathed in ink runes and sigils.

“Satan,” Dire said, stunned.

The demon’s smirk deepened, and he stalked towards him. Dire thought, with a savage surge of satisfaction, _Looks like I’m not dying from exposure after all_. He drew up the last remnants of his pride to scramble to his feet. He was shaking so hard the chains rattled, and he could not meet Satan’s eyes. Instead, he stared at the approaching boots through his ragged bangs. But he would like not to die on his knees. 

“What a nice surprise.”

Dire had expected a growl, a hiss, echoes of the other realm. A voice as imposing as the sheer height and size of him. But instead, his voice was warm, light, a sound to sink into.

“It’s been so long since the last offering, I thought you wretches had forgotten how to do it.” Satan reached out to tap a manacle with a sharp claw. “Perhaps you have forgotten. Back in the good old days, they used to leave me stronger men to play with.”

Dire took a shaky breath. He was ready to die. “Get on with it.”

Satan laughed. “The rabbit growls! Let me see you.”

His hand neared, clawed fingers moving to Dire’s chin, and Dire jerked up before they could touch him. He stared up, made bold through fear and fury, into Satan’s dark eyes. They were utterly black, no color or white to them. He could not tell what emotion, if any, passed through them. The smirk eased away, though, and Satan appeared to truly consider him for the first time. “You’re afraid.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re angry.”

“Of course I’m angry.” He was lowest-born. He knew his place. He was not to talk back to a common soldier, much less the lord of the next realm. But right now, he was beyond caring. “I’m also very tired. If you’re going to kill me, do it quickly.”

Satan’s laugh flicked out like a whip. Dire flinched back against the rough-hewn stone. 

“Kill you? I’ll not kill he who waits at my cross, with vervain on his brow.” He reached out and touched the talisman. The metal heated anew at his touch, and the prickle of magic had an entirely different quality to it. Dire felt it warm behind his ribs, seeping through his veins, and it was not unpleasant.

“I don’t understand,” Dire said. Perhaps the cold and hunger would have been a kinder death. At least then he wouldn’t have to suffer this taunting first.

The smirk was back. “You know not the bargain you make? How reckless.”

Dire glared. “It’s not _my_ bargain.”

Satan raised his eyebrows. He turned away, briefly, looking down the road, and when he turned back, firelight flickered in his dark eyes. “So, it is this Witch-Prince who seeks my power. How unfortunate for him, that his sycophants have so badly misread the ritual.”

Words dried in his throat: _I don’t understand_ , again. He hardly dared think he might survive this. But it seemed more possible with every smooth syllable from Satan’s lips.

“They’ve bargained your life for my power. And I’ll have your life—have no doubt of that, rabbit. I wish to linger longer in this gentle realm, and you will be my anchor. But in exchange, my power is _yours_ to wield.”

Dire stilled, slack-jawed. That could not be true—he was neither witch nor priest. He could not wield magic. And only the anointed could bargain with demons; to say otherwise was fallen-folk superstition. But it was a fallen-folk tablet that had led him here. And he could not deny the power was tempting. 

“Can I say no?”

“You can say it,” Satan allowed. “But I won’t heed it.”

Dire shivered. He appreciated the honesty, and the promise of power was sweet enough he could not even resent the fact that he had been traded from one master to the next without any say in it. He dared one more question: “What will you do, if you won’t kill me?”

Satan leaned in, heedless of Dire’s flinch, and pressed one palm to the stone beside his head. His hair fell to wreath his face, and his wings loosened, spread, to block out the stars. They did not touch, but Dire was suddenly, heatedly aware that they might. Aware of how little he wore, and how small he was.

“It is a very simple, very ancient ritual.” Satan’s lips hardly seemed to move. “How else to bind two bodies together?”

Dire scarcely had time to breathe, “ _Oh_ ,” before Satan’s lips closed on his.  
The kiss was gentle, firm, irresistible. Too warm, red-laced magic between them, and Dire’s mouth parted before he realized what he was doing.

He had kissed before. Years ago, before the war, when his duties were less onerous, and his free hours generous enough for more than exhausted sleep. This was something entirely different. Satan’s tongue was too long as it delved into his mouth. It was the wrong _shape_. Dire whimpered, heart pounding with—

Fear. It had to be fear.

Satan pulled away, leaving him flushed and panting in the dark. Dire had almost drawn the breath to ask, _Is that it?_ before Satan’s fingers fell upon his neck.

Of course, he thought, trembling to the touch. Of course that was not the end of this.

Satan hooked his claws around the golden chain and drew the talisman over his head. “Foolish priests, to think their human holy signs might ensnare me.” He dropped the talisman into the dirt. “I prefer to leave my own mark upon my creatures.” His hands fell next to Dire’s sides, fingers slotting between his ribs through diaphanous silk. 

Dire could not help straining towards the heat of his touch. His shoulders ached, and the harsh cold still bit into his wrists. Bit harder with his awful urge to wind his arms around Satan’s pale neck, and sink his hands into dark feathers. “Unchain me,” he rasped. “Please.”

Satan’s hands slipped around his waist, nearly spanning the width of him. His palms were firm and steady against the fluttering in Dire’s stomach. “No, not yet. I like the look of them on you.”

Any complaint Dire might have mustered was lost when Satan leaned in again, and pressed wet lips beneath his jaw. The slick, firm point of his tongue lapped at his skin, a wet heat near enough to distract from the rough hand slipping lower, and squeezing into his ass. Dire bit his lip against a whimper, and jerked in his bonds. Magic prickled at the edge of his senses—as airy as the silk he wore. As undeniable as Satan’s touch. 

Satan’s hands shifted again, and silk slid against Dire’s over-hot skin. He scarcely noticed his torn tunic fluttering to the dirt; now all he wore were his chains and the devil’s gaze.

For Satan’s attention was fixed entirely on him. Truly seeing him, as Dire had not been seen in—had never, perhaps, been seen. He recalled standing on the dais, under smoke and sunlight, and the Witch-Prince’s proclamation directed to the standing army. Not to him, the slave condemned to die. 

In the dark, against the headless cross, Satan murmured against his neck, and the words were for him alone: “Are you still afraid, little rabbit?”

And Dire was shocked to answer, “No.”

Satan bit, and Dire groaned. Bucked up, and Satan pressed close to him, so he rocked up against a rough-clad thigh. The broad hand on his ass pulled him closer. He would have fallen were it not for the chains and Satan’s grasp. Satan shoved him up, and Dire hissed, back scraping against rough stone, and froze up, belly clenching—but Satan held him steadily. He would not fall.

His legs hooked by instinct over Satan’s hips. Feathers brushed heavy and soft over his bare shins. Leather and buckles bit into his inner thighs. Satan trailed a claw gently from his hip to his knee. Dug a thumb into the hollow of his hip, and all Dire wanted was for that touch to move inward. His cock pressed hard against Satan’s stomach, caught on fine clothing, leaking on it, but he had not the leverage to rock, to seek friction.

Satan leaned away to unbuckle a belt, to slide away a sash. To unlace and unbutton. In the pause, Dire stared past Satan’s shoulder, past the curve of his wing, and into the stars. He leaned his head back against the cross, and spoke to the stars.

“How will I wield your power? How does it work?”

“My seal will bind me to you,” he answered. “So long as you live, I’ll be anchored here. And to that end, I’ll keep you alive.”

Satan hitched him higher against the cross, and reached between them. His claws receded slowly, and his fingers were somehow slick as they traced the hollows at the base of his spine.

“And in return for your hospitality—” Two fingers traced his spread cleft, rubbing slowly, slickly from his tailbone down, and the blunt pressure had Dire gasping. “—I will do as you like. Well, mostly.”

Satan grinned. He bent down, pressed hot lips to the shell of Dire’s ear, at the same time as one blunt fingertip caught on Dire’s hole. Tugged at his rim. “I’ll also do as _I_ like, of course.”

Dire was not sure he liked the tenuous boundaries of this relationship. There seemed to be little in the way of formal agreement or protection. But—he squirmed, nerves fraying as Satan pushed and pulled at him—there was something exhilarating about the conflict he proposed. In speaking of the difference between their wants, the demon allowed that difference to exist. He allowed, carelessly, casually, the possibility that Dire might have thoughts and desires of his own. That he was a person, and not just a lowest-born enslaved to his master’s command. 

When Dire had dreamed of freedom, he had not dreamed it shackled to a stone, and worked open by a demon’s fingers.

Yes—one blunt finger, pressing in—no, two, he thought. Too much, too fast—he panted, “Wait,” but Satan’s fingers were already hooking inside him, forcefully pressing. Like he could hold Dire up just by those two fingers in his tight hole. Dire’s eyes stung. His muscles tensed. 

“Is that too much?” Satan purred. “Can you keep up with me, rabbit?”

Dire clenched his fists, clenched his jaw, could not summon words—just a glare. Satan grinned, sharp teeth glinting, and shoved a third finger in.

Dire barely felt the scrape of rock, the bite of the manacles. All feeling narrowed down to Satan’s fingers pumping roughly into him—slicked by who knows what—not stretching, not careful, just playing with him. Dire’s cock bobbed untouched against his stomach, leaking precome. Heat radiated from the core of him down his limbs, until his very toe tips buzzed with it. 

Satan kissed his shoulder. Bit down. Rested his cheekbone on the tender spot and smiled up at Dire. Drew out his fingers, straightened. Drew their bodies into alignment. Dire’s thighs shook from the effort of clinging to Satan’s hips. And Satan paused. His cockhead pushed against Dire’s hole, but did not push in. Dire bit his lip, and struggled for calm. 

“You’re still angry,” Satan said. “What will you do when I unchain you?”

Dire’s heart was a whetstone, and he sharpened his hate upon it. Desire shattered like glass from his lips: “I want to kill them.”

Satan’s hands tightened beneath his thighs. His dark, pointed tongue flickered over his lips. He said, “Go on.”

And he pressed forward.

Dire’s breath hitched as Satan breached him. He was dizzy with exhaustion. Hunger. His wrists ached. His feet stung. His back burned. He was dizzy with desire and the promise of power. And dark, starless eyes regarded him, waiting. Dire found the breath to go on, in a low, rough voice.

“The soldiers who chained me here. Only one of them spat at me, but her comrades were no better. They thought nothing of chaining me here to die.”

Satan slid in, slowly, and Dire’s nerves sang with pain and pressure not unwelcome. “Go on,” Satan said again.

“Twelve soldiers escorted me here. I think I remember their faces. And—if not—” he whimpered, arched, as Satan’s cock slid in more. Satan was _thick_ , so that Dire’s body reshaped reluctantly around his unrelenting heat. “If not,” he continued, near breathless, “I don’t really care. Let the wrong heads roll. Any of them would have done the same to me. I’m just—”

He broke off with a cry, eyes flying wide, as Satan thrust, hard, all the way in. Dire jerked, unmoored, pinned above the earth by iron and stone and claws and hot, hot flesh. No sooner was Satan seated in him than he rocked out—and Dire had no time to adjust to the emptying before he was filled again. Again. Too much, too fast, again, _too much_ , and he could hold only one thought in his head.

_Power._

He’d take any pain, any bargain, for a chance to strike back.

He kept talking as Satan pounded into him. In between cries, when he had breath, he babbled on. Described the cleric who had taken his boots, and how he hated him. Described the Gray Priest, who had worked him to the bone for two long years on the war road, who could not have picked him out of a crowd, no matter how well acquainted the back of his hand was with Dire’s face. 

“And the Witch-Prince. Give me—”

Satan curved over him, rocked up into him, held him up with one strong hand while the other traced up his tense body. Claws sharpening, catching on his skin, leaving pinpricks of pain along his ribs.

“Give me a knife,” Dire swore, “and I’ll cut his smile wider. Cut off his fingers, to take his rings for my own. Shove the blade between his teeth, back into his throat. Let him choke on his own blood, thick as his lies.”

Satan shoved into him, hard, and froze. His groan was distant thunder, quiet, echoing, and his forehead pressed to Dire’s. Magic crackled between them, and pain seared across Dire’s chest at the same moment new heat burst inside of him. Dire writhed with the pain, with the glory, and as he rose with the sensation, the sky flashed red. Wildfire unfurled across the night sky, and through Dire’s veins. All he breathed was magic, and his release was an afterthought in the aftershocks.

He slumped, still shaking, against the cross. His dropped his head, but Satan’s free hand caught him by the jaw and held up his face. Caressed his cheek.

“Little pet,” Satan breathed. His thumb rubbed, tingling, over Dire’s lower lip. “I’ll give you far, far more than a knife to wield.”

*

He nearly fell when Satan unchained him. Would have fallen, but Satan held him by the forearms until he had his feet. Even then, Satan stayed at his side, one clawed hand gentle at the small of his back.

Dire rubbed his wrists. In one spot, his fingers slipped in blood. He’d pulled too hard. His chest still burned, and he looked down to see dark lines on his skin. More blood, he thought at first. But even in the darkness, the lines were clearly too black and too deliberate: an angular sigil, wide as his spread hand, like a cage over his heart. When he touched it, hesitantly, it no longer hurt.

The rest of him hurt, inside and out. Particularly—he took a step, winced—inside.

But magic still hummed through him, seated behind Satan’s sigil. It coalesced and burrowed into him. Dire’s stomach flipped. His mouth twitched, again, and curved into a smile. He looked up, and found an answering smile on Satan’s pale lips.

He had walked through fire unharmed; now, to paint the earth and sky with blood.


End file.
